I thought it was their table

I recently had the privilege to attend a conference in Ignacio, Colorado sponsored by the Payne Institute for Public Policy and NTEA, and hosted by the Southern Ute tribe. The conference was the first event sponsored by the new NAMES or Center for Native American Mining and Energy Sovereignty. Needless to say I learned a lot and even enjoyed the 340 miles road trip (one way) it took me to get there. I stayed with some friends in nearly Durango. Durango is a four-hour trip (any direction) to the nearest interstate so you really must want to go there when you start out. But when you get there is land is special. I even met the first recipient of the NAMES scholarship (Kiera Billy a member of the Navajo tribe and a graduate student in electrical engineering, interested in power systems, at Colorado School of Mines).

All indigenous tribes are under the United States just as other major groups. However, unlike other minority groups who are immigrants to the United States, Native Americans are indigenous to American land and have therefore earned sovereignty. It is difficult to describe Native American government in a definite manner due to the fact that there are many different Native tribes with different forms of governance. In January 2016 there were *566 federally recognized Native American tribes.

During the colonial period, Native American sovereignty was upheld by the negotiation of treaties between British proprietors and Native American tribes. Treaties are rules between the tribe and government. The treaties were made with the agreement that the tribes had equal sovereignty as the sovereignty of the colonial governments. The treaties ended in 1871 with the Indian Appropriations, which changed recognition of the tribes to "domestic dependent nations" rather than independent nations.

What is Sovereignty? Sovereignty, in political theory, the ultimate overseer, or authority, in the decision-making process of the state and in the maintenance of order. The concept of sovereignty—one of the most controversial ideas in political science and international law—is closely related to the difficult concepts of state and government and of independence and democracy. Derived from the Latin superanus through the French souveraineté, the term was originally understood to mean the equivalent of supreme power. However, its application in practice often has departed from this traditional meaning. https://www.britannica.com/topic/sovereignty

Preparing for this conference I have read several interesting articles on mineral and energy sovereignty on native American tribal lands. I have quoted from several of them in this post. (Native American Energy Sovereignty is key to American Energy Security, Rick Tallman, Daniel Cardenas and Morgan Bazilian, Wilson Center, Wahba Institute for Strategic? Competition, 2023)

“Native American lands are extraordinarily rich with energy resources.? Tribal lands contain twenty percent of America’s known oil and gas deposits, thirty percent of America’s coal reserves west of the Mississippi River, and fifty percent of America’s uranium reserves. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has confirmed the presence of millions of gigawatts of renewable energy potential across America’s Tribal territories.? Still, significant Tribal energy development efforts remain stymied.? In many cases the issue is not technical nor economic, but rather a Byzantine set of bureaucratic rules, regulations, policies, and legislation that keeps energy development out of reach for many interested Tribes.”

On paper, the energy transition offers Tribes a major opportunity. Approximately 97% of U.S. nickel reserves, 89% of its copper reserves and 79% of its lithium reserves lie on or within 35 miles of Native American reservations, according to financial research firm MCSI. Nickel, copper, and lithium are crucial components of batteries, wind turbines and numerous other clean technologies and military systems.

For the past century, the development of energy resources on Tribal lands has been primarily managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, with little or no input from the Tribes or their communities.? The result has been a fundamentally flawed approach that the Inspector General of the Department of Interior has officially determined does not comply with environmental law, does not provide sufficient planning and mineral resource management, and lacks effective data management.? What little money the Bureau has collected from energy companies who have profited from Tribal lands has often simply disappeared without ever reaching the Tribe. Federal agencies have maintained no accounting of these financial assets for over 100 years. ?

At a practical level, however, most Tribes lack enough administrative capabilities, associated institutions, and technically trained workforces to take advantage of future mining and processing opportunities. With some exceptions, Native Tribes and Tribal communities are collectively some of the poorest in the U.S. even though they are together the largest landowners outside the federal government.

The United States government has a strong history making deals with Native Americans and not keeping them. There is also a horrific and well-documented historical precedent to overcome. In the U.S., the legacy of mining on Tribal lands is rife with financial and human exploitation, abrogated contracts and agreements and dire environmental and health impacts and disparities. ?

Establishing “effective and meaningful participation” requires the removal of obstacles and delays in agency procedures that hinder the self-governance of Tribes.? Within the energy sector, the failure of federal agencies to uphold their responsibilities under the Indian Self-Determination Act has resulted in decades of economic waste, environmental damage, and lost opportunities for the creation of sustainable energy and desperately needed jobs. (Bending Bureaucracy Towards Tribal Sovereignty, W. Gregory Guedel, Rick Tallman, Richard Luarkie, and Morgan D. Bazilian, May 20, 2024, Wilson Center)

I think there is incremental progress of getting native American voices at the table in both government and commercial negotiations. But just inviting them to the table is not the end goal. As well as listening we (as Anglos) also need to understand what they are saying and often the context is different from ours. A 150-year history of treating them first as hostile enemies, then almost as children we need to educate and take care of, takes a lot to overcome. I was impressed that every native American spokesperson mentioned creating value for their entire community, even to future generations yet to be born. You don’t hear that concept often from today’s politics.

Communications is both talking and listening. I wasn’t on any panels or didn’t give any talks so I had the chance to listen. There is progress but there seems to me a lot farther to go and with the urgent demand for the critical minerals for the energy transition and the desire to on-shore mineral resources for energy security, we don’t have a lot of time to get together. If you wanted to start a mining operation today it may take 10-15 years just to get the permits.

Efforts like NAMES are vital but there is still a big divide to bridge. The representatives of the public agencies seem to say that everything was going well and the native Americans has a seat at their table. Research from the Hoover Project on Renewing Indigenous Economies at Stanford University (Dr. Nick Parker) seem to disagree. ?But it is their table (mineral and energy resources) that we are talking about. I sensed a strong degree of paternalism in the public policy, a big economic dividend from the potential mining companies and a sense of frustration from the native American representatives. But at least they were talking. Rick Tallman (from the Payne Institute) and Daniel Cardenas (from NTEA) have gotten that far.

As the late N. Scott Momaday, the first Native American to win a Pulitzer Prize, wrote in Earth Keeper: “Something of our relationship to the earth is determined by the particular place we stand at a given time. If you stand still long enough to observe carefully the things around you, you will find beauty, and you will know wonder.”